Wizards of the Coast traditionally does well to stock Dungeons and Dragons fans with plenty of extra resources for their adventures. In recent history, Wizards has seemingly doubled down on that. Dungeons and Dragons gets new sourcebooks year-round nowadays, and diverse ones at that. There's books like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything that offer players more spells and subclasses, there's books like Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron that bring whole D&D settings to life, and so on. Wizards of the Coast just published Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft for the ongoing D&D 5th edition, but there's already a couple more important sourcebooks on the horizon.
Wizards of the Coast recently revealed The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, a new adventure that will spotlight fey creatures and the Feywild. As big as that is, Wizards revealed another book only a month later: Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, a tome focusing on dragons and encouraging DMs to put dragons at the center of Dungeons and Dragons. Interestingly, these two books have something in common: They focus on creature types that are pretty uncommon as far as published monster statistics are concerned. If these additions to the DM's fey and dragons toolkits are indicative of a pattern, then the next sourcebook could focus on another underserved D&D creature type.
Dungeons and Dragons' Mysterious Creatures
Although the Feywild is arguably one of Dungeons and Dragons' most famous planes, there's not a ton of published fey available to DMs interested in running Feywild adventures. The Monster Manual features a couple basic examples like dryads and hags, while later books introduced more niche creatures such as powerful eladrin and redcaps. However, they've always only appeared in handfuls, and there's no statistics for really powerful fey akin to the archdevils and demon lords introduced by Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight will almost certainly include valuable new fey monsters, as well as Feywild player races recently teased as Unearthed Arcana.
Similarly, dragons aren't actually very common in published Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks despite being part of the game's name. The Monster Manual naturally includes the ten elemental dragon types at various ages, but books after that only offer a handful of other dragons. Fizban's Treasury of Dragons should completely overhaul that, introducing gem dragons and other dragon varieties alongside dragon-related tools for players.
Wizards of the Coast has been working on D&D 5E for long enough that it can see the gaps it needs to fill. Its reasoning for making The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Fizban's Treasury of Dragons may very well stem from a realization that 5E is seriously lacking in fey and dragon content. By the end of 2021, D&D fans should have a lot more tools in these departments. Fey and dragons aren't the only creature types Wizards of the Coast should give some support, though. If Wizards of the Coast is trying to broaden player horizons, then there's a couple types of monsters that the sourcebook after Fizban could focus on.
Dungeons and Dragons Could Always Use More Creatures
For one, Wizards of the Coast could make a book about giants. Although there's some decent choices thanks to variants of true giants and trolls published after the Monster Manual, there's still room to explore giants. A book about a plane like Ysgard that plays host to many giants would be a great medium to expand this creature type. Similarly, celestials don't have a ton of representation in Dungeons and Dragons 5E. Wizards might publish a book of divine D&D lore, delivering some insight on the gods and places like Mount Celestia while publishing some new celestial stat blocks.
Wizards of the Coast keeps making it easier for DMs to run interplanar D&D 5E games with its new sourcebooks. It has gone above and beyond expanding the roster of fiends that DMs can pit players against when plumbing the Lower Planes. Similarly, there's a wealth of aberrations available for adventurers fighting against the unfathomable influence of the Far Realms. Wizards of the Coast seems poised to expand even more Dungeons and Dragons creature types, and that's a great thing. The more types of 5E adventures that Wizards enables, the better.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight releases September 21 in physical and digital formats.